Category: Delphi Programming

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Delphi version 1.0's Launch

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Delphi version 1.0’s Launch

Posted on by davidi

By David Intersimone “David I” – Friday, February 14, 2025

Today we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the launch of Delphi version 1.0 on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1995, at the Software Development West Conference in San Francisco California. More that 12 years of continuous IDE, language, tools and library development led up to the launch of Delphi version 1.0.

The development of Delphi can trace some of its roots and technologies across Borland product releases including Turbo Pascal 1 (DOS and CP/M), Turbo Pascal 3 (overlays), Turbo Pascal 4 (units), Turbo Pascal 5 (integrated and standalone debugger), Turbo Pascal 5.5 (objects), Turbo Pascal for the Mac, Turbo Pascal for Windows, Borland Pascal 7 for DOS and Windows, Paradox, dBase and InterBase. While Borland Pascal 7 was available, the development team had been working for about 2 years to complete the first Delphi release (see links at the end of this article for a few of the important historical documents).

The Delphi “Sneak Peak” at the Borland Conference 1994

The first public showing of Delphi took place at the Borland International Conference (BIC) 1994 Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan Hotels, Orlando Florida. The original language track was focused on Borland C++ 4 and also Borland Pascal. Paul Gross gave the “Product Address: Languages” in the Swan Ballroom on Monday morning from 8-9:15am. Prior to the conference a last minute decision was made to add two Delphi sessions: “Sneak Peak: Rapid Application Development in Pascal” session given by Zack Urlocker (Delphi95) and Bill Dunlap’s sneak session, “Sneak Peak: Exception Handling in Pascal”. “Even Spencer the Cat hasn’t seen this,” said senior product manager Zack Urlocker. Delphi95 will “compete with Visual Basic on the low end and PowerBuilder on the high end.”

It’s funny to look back and remember that the title of the Zack and Bill sessions were titled “Sneak Peak” – instead of “Sneak Peek” – a purposeful choice of the word “Peak” to denote the state-of-the-art technologies in Rapid Application Development (Visual Basic and PowerBuilder still did not integrate native code compilers).

There was also an NDA session for leading Paradox developer partners where Delphi95 was presented. One of the questions during the session was “is this the Paradox compiler that was rumored to be in development?” The answer was no, unless you wanted to use Delphi and the BDE to access your Paradox files.

The Delphi v1 Launch – Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1995

The Delphi launch took place at the Miller Freeman Software Development Conference West in San Francisco California, on Valentine’s Day, February 14th 1995 at 7PM just after Philippe Kahn’s keynote “The Importance of Object Computing – The Algorithmic Link”. Two editions of Delphi were announced: Delphi and Delphi Client/Server. Before the launch, we were demonstrating existing Borland language products in the Borland booth. The day after the launch we demoed Delphi to overflowing crowds of enthusiastic developers.

While we annually celebrate the launch of Delphi version 1.0 on February 14, the actual RTM (release to manufacturing) date, and the date that all of the Delphi v1 files are date stamped, was February 15, 1995. Gary Whizin, R&D manager for Delphi tells the story about the RTM date in a 10 year remembrance audio interview. Gary said that the team did sign off the Delphi 1 master on February 14, 1995 before driving to the conference for the product launch. A stop ship bug was found and the product was re-mastered and the team signed off the first version again on February 15, 1995 (the date stamp on the files).

What Made Delphi version 1 So Special

While Microsoft had Visual Basic and PowerSoft had PowerBuilder, what differentiated Delphi was the combination of the power of the Object Pascal language, a visual component-based development environment and desktop and SQL database access:

  • High speed, native code compiler
  • IDE providing visual two-way tools – form designer and source code editor
  • TObject, records, component, and owner memory management
  • Property Method Event (PME)
  • Visual Component Library (VCL)
  • Runtime Library (RTL)
  • Structured exception handling
  • Data-aware components live at design time
  • Database support via BDE and SQL Links


Running Delphi v1 on Windows 3.1 in a DOSBox on a Win10 (or 11) PC

To Get Started

If you’re unfamiliar with how to install and run Delphi v1 on Windows 3.1, watch the YouTube video, “Stu’s Game Reviews – How to Play Windows 3.1 Games in Windows 11!!! New for 2024!!!”. Sure, it’s about installing Windows 3.1 and running games, but the information and steps work for any Windows 3.1 software including Delphi v1. Hint: you don’t need to install the drivers mentioned in the video unless you also want to play games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4vtHkan5xw

The Software You Need to Run Delphi v1 on Windows 3.1

The following is a list of the required software to get Windows 3.1 and Delphi running on your Windows 10 (or 11) PC.

DOSBox-X: https://dosbox-x.com/ or DosBox v7.4.2 https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

Windows 3.1 (Retail) (3.5-1.44mb) Contains 1.44mb 3.5″ retail disk images https://winworldpc.com/download/41574932-18c3-9a11-c3a4-e284a2c3a570

Borland Delphi 1.00 (2-15-1995)(CD) ISO https://winworldpc.com/download/c2b3c3be-c38a-e280-b00b-c38711c3a5ef

Borland Delphi 1.00 (2-15-1995)(CD).7z contains the following folders:

Installing Windows 3.1 and Delphi v1

To install Windows 3.1 and Delphi v1 I used DOSBox-X because it has a feature to easily handle swapping the Windows 3.1 six floppy disk image files and because “Stu” told me to use it 🙂

Install DOSBox-X and choose a folder on your Windows 10 (or 11) PC hard drive. Select all of the default settings during the install.

To install Windows 3.1, start DOSBox-X and mount the floppy disk image files for Windows 3.1. (note: I put the Win31 floppy disk images on my hard disk in a folder named “c:\w31”. I installed Windows 3.1 in my c:\DOSBox folder). The commands I typed were:

  • mount c: c:\DOSBox
  • imgmount a: c:\w31\disk01.img c:\w31\disk02.img c:\w31\disk03.img c:\w31\disk04.img c:\w31\disk05.img c:\w31\disk06.img -t floppy
  • a:
  • setup

When Windows setup asks you to put disk 2 in drive A:, use the DOSBox-X menu “Drive” menu item, select drive A and in the popup menu select “Swap disk” (note: Guy said you might be able to use CTRL-F4). This will “put floppy disk 2 into drive A”. To complete the Windows 3.1 install, repeat this procedure for each of the remaining floppy disks. Note that DOSBox-X is in control of your mouse. When the Windows install asks for input (for example when it asks you to type in your name and company), hit CTRL-F10 to switch mouse control to the program your installing and then to get mouse control back to DOSBox-X hit CTRL-F10 again (you will hear an audible beep each time you hit CTRL-F10 if your PC’s sound is turned on).

When you choose to exit the Windows 3.1 setup program click the “Reboot” button to restart the DOS virtual machine to take you back to DOSBox-X.

To install Delphi v1 I put the CDROM install image, Delphi.iso, in my c:\installs folder. Using DOSBox-X, I typed the following commands:

  • imgmount d: C:\Installs\Delphi.iso -t cdrom
  • c:
  • cd windows
  • win

After Windows 3.1 starts, use the “File Manager” app to install Delphi.


and click on the “d” drive that contains the Delphi 1 CDROM.


Open the “INSTALL” folder and you’ll see folders containing the contents for each of the 15 floppy disk images (DISK1-DISK15) and the SETUP.EXE program.

Click on the SETUP.EXE program to install Delphi 1. Note: if you have the separate floppy disk image files (not recommended), follow the Windows 3.1 DOSBox-X “imgmount” command and floppy swap disk steps above for selecting and using all 15 of the floppy disk image files.

After Windows 3.1 and Delphi v1 were installed, the following is the c:\DOSBox folder contents:

With Windows 3.1 and Delphi v1 installed you’re now ready to experience the intoxication of using Delphi version 1.0 on your Windows PC 🙂

Running Delphi version 1.0

To run the Windows and Delphi you just installed, you can use either DOSBox-X or DOSBox.

Type the following commands:

  • mount c: c:\DOSBox
  • cd windows
  • win

Then from within Windows open the Delphi folder and click on the Delphi icon. Note: use Ctrl-F10 to capture and release the mouse for use on your PC desktop and in the DOSBox running Windows.

Check Out the Delphi version 1.0 Easter Eggs

In the Delphi v1 IDE select the Help | About menu item.

Hold down the Alt-key and type (all caps) DEVELOPERS

Hold down the Alt-key and type (all caps) AND

You’ll see a picture of Anders Hejlsberg floating in one of the lakes on the Borland campus in Scotts Valley, California. I shot a video of Anders (in Denmark Donald Duck is called “ANDERS AND”), during an all day party to celebrate his engagement, and grabbed a video frame to put in the About Box for Delphi.

Hold down the Alt-key and type (all caps) TEAM

You’ll see multiple pages of the names of the extended Delphi team that were a part of the development, launch and support of Delphi 1.0 (in alphabetical order by first name).

Here is a group photo of the extended Delphi team taken in the outdoor amphitheater on the campus.


Three Delphi adds that appeared in developer magazines during the launch year

Happy 30th Anniversary Delphi Launch Day!!!

I send big hugs and love to all of the employees who ever worked on Delphi. I send my thanks to all of the technology partners and MVPs who support Delphi. And, I send my deepest thanks to all of the customers who have ever used Delphi (many still do), attend Delphi conferences and seminars, participate in Delphi user groups, participate in online webinars, and share knowledge, source code and suggestions to help everyone (including me) become better Delphi software engineers.

Check out my YouTube video: Windows 3.1 and Delphi version 1.0 running on my Windows 10 PC

I can’t finish this Delphi anniversary story without including a special developer, author and educator in my life, my brother separated at birth, and my technology travelling companion. That very special someone is Charlie Calvert. Charlie started at Borland working in technical support. Charlie is the author of “Turbo Pascal Programming 101”. After getting to know Charlie, I knew he was a one-of-a-kind developer, author and human being. I asked Charlie to join me in Borland Developer Relations. During the development of Delphi we knew that we would need great documentation, example programs, and to rev up our global Turbo Pascal community to be ready for the launch of Delphi. Charlie used his unique talents as a developer and an author to create his “Delphi Unleashed” book and also helped the team with the documentation. Charlie and I traveled the world together to present Delphi to customers, at conferences and meet with partners. While we were both children of the 60’s wearing comfy clothes (I wear Tie-dye t-shirts almost every day), on a trip to Madrid Spain we met with the government technology team working to create Spain’s early eBanking infrastructure. Nestor Miranda, head of the Borland office in Madrid, asked us to wear suits for the meeting because we were going to meet the head of the Bank of Spain. Along with two of Charlie’s programming books here is, probably the only time, a picture of Charlie and me at our hotel before we left for the meeting.

While I don’t travel, write, present and program nearly as much as I did during my 30+ years at Borland International, Inprise, Borland Software, CodeGear and Embarcadero, I have the code, pictures, videos and great memories that keep me smiling. I still program using Delphi as a semi-retired software engineer. Programming keeps me young, happy and alive!

Additional Information (with links)

Why the Name “Delphi”? By Danny Thorpe https://web.archive.org/web/20100411053213/https://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20396

Interview with Anders Hejlsberg, Chief Architect of Delphi conducted by .EXE Magazine editor Will Watts from 1995 https://web.archive.org/web/20200213131815/https://www.theopenforce.com/2020/02/anders-hejlsberg-delphi-1995.html

Delphi 1.0 Reviewers Guide http://web.archive.org/web/19961221161914/http://www.borland.com/delphi/delphi1.0/guide/8.1.1.html

Delphi Product Definition 3rd Draft (incomplete) May 13, 1993 by Zack Urlocker https://web.archive.org/web/20210928095512/https://edn.embarcadero.com/article/32971

Visual Component Library First Draft – May 24, 1993 https://web.archive.org/web/20090309083617/http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/32975

Delphi 1.0 launch demos source code, launch script – provided by Anders Hejlsberg https://web.archive.org/web/20210513011702/https://edn.embarcadero.com/article/32977

Delphi 1.0 Quick Info Guide and Features for Delphi and Delphi Client/Server editions https://web.archive.org/web/20010618130820/http://www.borland.com/delphi/del1/quinfo.html

Delphi 1.0 Fact Sheet https://web.archive.org/web/20010525055617/http://www.borland.com/delphi/del1/dpfctsht.html

Delphi 1.0 Client/Server for Windows 3.X Quick Info Guide https://web.archive.org/web/20010525055623/http://www.borland.com/delphi/del1/csqinfo.html

50 Years of Pascal and Delphi by Marco Cantu https://blogs.embarcadero.com/50-years-of-pascal-and-delphi-is-in-power/

Delphi Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(software)

Delphi Wiki (Fandom) https://delphi.fandom.com/wiki/Delphi_Wiki

Brian Long’s Delphi & RAD Studio Easter Eggs http://blong.com/Undocumented/EasterEggs.htm#Delphi

What’s New in Delphi (and RAD Studio) version links and (release dates):

Technology News Worth Reading

Posted on by davidi

Here are a few technology news stories that I’ve read in the past week or so.

News Headlines

How to Convert a PDF to PNG or JPG in Java

This article reviews three Conversion APIs that will allow you to convert any PDF document into an image. This includes conversion to a PNG or JPG array with one image created per page in your document. The article also discusses how you can merge and stack your PDF pages for conversion into a single PNG, or “tall” image. The goal for this tutorial is to simplify and improve your versatility for document display and sharing. Furthermore, as most documents can be converted to PDF, you can apply these APIs to any file, post-PDF-conversion. Read the DZone article.

Popular JavaScript Frameworks to Build API and Microservices

This Dzone post discusses the most popular JavaScript frameworks used to build APIs and Microservices. Microservices and APIs are often being confused for each other. In reality, they are 2 separate concepts altogether, where API is a communication pattern and microservices are an architectural pattern. Read the DZone article.

How to Build Real-Time Notification Service Using Server-Sent Events (SSE)

Most of the communication on the Internet comes directly from the clients to the servers. The client usually sends a request, and the server responds to that request. There are some scenarios in which the server needs to send a message to the client without the preceding request. In such cases, developers have a couple of options: use short and long polling, webhooks, websockets, or event streaming platforms like Kafka. However, there is another technology, not popularized enough, which in many cases, is just perfect for the job. This technology is the Server-Sent Events (SSE) standard. Read the DZone article.

Facebook Announces Beta Messenger API Support for Instagram

Facebook announces updates to the Messenger API to support Instagram messaging, giving businesses new tools to manage their customer communications on Instagram at scale. The new API features enable businesses to integrate Instagram messaging with their preferred business applications and workflows; helping drive more meaningful conversations, increase customer satisfaction and grow sales. The updated API is currently in beta with a limited number of developer partners and businesses. Read the Facebook announcement.

IBM Unveils New Capabilities for Preserving Aging Infrastructure Using AI, 3D Modeling and Data Capture

IBM announces new capabilities in IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure to help prolong the lifespan of aging bridges, tunnels, highways, and railways. New enhancements include the ability to deploy on Red Hat OpenShift for hybrid cloud environments, as well as new AI and 3D model annotation tools that can provide deep industry and task-specific insights to support engineers. “Tools like AI, predictive maintenance, drones and hybrid cloud will play an important role in meeting the challenge of rising infrastructure costs, and helping these vital structures endure for future generations,” said Bjarne Jørgensen, Executive Director, Asset Management at Sund and Baelt. “These solutions can help determine the exact need for maintenance in near real-time to assist organizations in extending the lifetime of structures.” Read the press release.

13 Tools to Monitor Remote Teams (Plus Tips)

How do employers ensure that their remote teams remain productive? This is where remote monitoring tools come into the picture. Remote monitoring tools are an excellent way for companies to continue moving with the tide without compromising the productivity of their remote employees or micromanaging them. This DZone article discusses 13 of the most popular remote monitoring tools.

Building a C++ VCL Customer/Sales Master/Detail/Charting Application with 1 Line of Code

These days low-code development is en vogue. Various research groups, such as Gartner, put the low-code application development platform market at ~$10M billion in 2019 and project CAGR to be greater than 20% from 2020 to 2027. This post shows how you can build a Windows C++ Customer/Sales, Master/Detail/Charting application that only needs 1 line of code.

Things to consider when running visual tests in CI/CD pipelines

This blog post contains a summary of the author’s recent webinar and focuses on demos that show how to handle visual testing in CI/CD. The demos focused on 3 different CI/CD scenarios: Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions and Container Based Pipelines.

An Open Source Sorting Algorithms Visualizer

This GitHub project is a tool, made with python and pygame, for visualizing sorting algorithms in an educational way. The project’s purpose is to portray several sorting algorithms so the user can understand how a computer “move some pieces” to achieve the goal of having sorted data at the end!

A faster way to prototype your APIs using OpenAPI 3 and Swagger UI

The goal of this GitHub project is to create a generator that conveniently creates API definitions in the OpenAPI 3 format using marshmallow classes and saves them into a YAML file. You can think this project as programmable API definitions/documentation for your API (your API can be written in any language, not only in Python). Python is used here just for convenience of describing classes and has less code yet strong typing. Then you can inject the generated YAML file with Swagger UI to any project (just a page that renders Swagger UI HTML code which requests the generated YAML file).

Fun With SQL Using Postgres and Azure Data Studio

Azure Data Studio is a cross-platform database tool for data professionals using the Microsoft family of on-premises and cloud data platforms on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is very easy to install and offers a modern editor experience with IntelliSense, code snippets, source control integration, and an integrated terminal. It’s engineered with the data platform user in mind, with the built-in charting of query result sets and customizable dashboards. You can learn more about it from the official website on this link. ADS also has notebooks that are similar to Jupiter notebooks for python and other languages and are great for combining formatted text with code. You can execute queries via a query window or via a notebook window. This post discusses some of the basics and at the same time shares the author’s experience using Azure Data Studio.

AppSec vs. DevSecOps, and what that means for developers

Traditional application security is different in two key ways from what has come to be known as DevSecOps. First, modern software companies are integrating application security into their DevOps pipelines, so security becomes part of the flow. Second, it’s also about DevOps being built into application security. In this SD Times article, Patrick Carey, who leads product strategy in the Software Integrity Group at security solutions provider Synopsys, explains these differences. By building application security into your automated development environment, he said, security “is initiated through events, rather than necessarily a phase where somebody at the end of the line, whose job it is to make sure that you didn’t screw up and code a vulnerability,” does the testing. On the other side of that coin, building DevOps into AppSec, eliminates the gates created by traditional DAST or pen-testing tools, creating instead guardrails that allow the team to move forward with relatively low friction but to stay on track. In the traditional gated pass-fail system, “if you fail you got your vulnerability report that just said you know there were a bunch of vulnerabilities, but oh, by the way we can’t tell you exactly where those are in your code; your developer’s going to have to go figure that out.”

5 edge computing predictions for 2021

The new business models that will push edge computing “from science project to real value” in 2021 are largely based around two factors, Forrester said: Cloud platforms having to compete with artificial intelligence, and the widespread proliferation of 5G will make edge use cases more practical. With those two drivers in mind, Forrester made five predictions about how the tech world will evolve in 2021 that will directly impact edge computing. Read the article that lists Forrester’s predictions.

New in C++Builder/Delphi 10.4.1 IDE: Package LibSuffix Auto Choice

Posted on by davidi

The C++Builder and Delphi Project | Options | Description page allows developers to

  • Choose and Set build target configurations
  • Write a description for the package
  • Set strings for the package library filename’s prefix, suffix and version
  • Define the use of the package (designtime, runtime or both)
  • Specify how the package is built (rebuild as needed or explicit rebuild)

In previous versions (version 10.3 and earlier) of C++Builder and Delphi developers building packages needed to manually set their package’s library suffix setting. The DocWiki “What’s new in version 10.4.1” mentions a new IDE projects option for setting the library suffix:

“Package AUTO libsuffix: packages can now have an automatic version suffix, instead of manually updating and specifying the right version suffix with each new release. (The compiler quietly supported this in 10.4, but full support for the feature in the IDE and package project settings is introduced in 10.4.1.)”

While you can still set a string for the library filename suffix, selecting the new ComboBox choice, “$(Auto)”, allows the compiler to set the suffix to match the package build version used by the compiler. For each target build (debug and release) and OS platform the resulting package filename follows a pattern:

Win32 and Win64: <prefix>Package1<suffix>.<version>.bpl
Android: <prefix>Package1<suffix>.so.<version>
macOS and iOS: <prefix>Package1<suffix>.<version>.dylib

Creating and building a package with Delphi and C++Builder version 10.4.1, choosing the $Auto option for the suffix and setting other Description page settings results in a filename like the test package project images shown below.

C++Builder and Delphi also support package-specific compiler directives to include in a package project’s source code.

C++Builder Product Information

C++Builder Product Page – Native Apps that Perform. Build Windows C++ Apps 10x Faster with Less Code
C++Builder Product Editions – C++Builder is available in four editions – Professional, Enterprise, Architect and Community (free). C++Builder is also available as part of the RAD Studio development suite.